1.) When, in your opinion, did the boys just give up? Not in terms of them stopping show prep but obviously not giving a shit about the show. During your tenure? After you left? Who was the first to give up?
I'd say it was the early days of Twitter and smartphones. It's not so much that Opie gave up first, it was just easier for him to fade into the background. He's not a prolific interviewer. He's not cranking out the one-liners. That's why he'd kill the flow all the time. He'd snap out of his Twitter k-hole, look at the phones, and go to one.
2.) What was the deal with the Opies wedding situation? Was he making a bigger deal out of you guys leaving than what was really said? Opie said he left the wedding, Ant says he left during the ceremony.
We were told that nobody did seating arrangements until the last minute so none of the "team" were sitting together. I call bullshit there and was just a way for Opie to flex and separate us. Anyway, that was part of the reason we all wanted to leave. We all stayed through the ceremony, and attended the majority of the reception. We all decided once coffee was served, it wouldn't be rude to get going. If we were all together we probably would have stayed longer, but Anthony wanted to get back to gambling, and it was an hour away, and we were all in one car. Anthony, Keith, his wife, me, my chick. Plus it was the Borgata's car which was Anthony. Bossman wants to leave, we're leaving.
3.) Exactly how deep was Anthonys hatred for Opie? I hate working with this guy? I hate him personally? I should have the show? Keyword there: Did Ant ever suggest that he deserved the show or that Opie should be out?
The hate was there for sure. It was for sure the first two. Anytime Opie was out, there would always be discussion later on that day about how nice it was and time just flew by. There were personal things as well. They had a major beef over FH Rileys. Something like, Anthony went there and it took like 40 mins for them to seat him and then Opie texts him saying some shit like he didn't leave a good enough tip. It was a whole fucking thing. I don't think he ever mentioned squeezing Opie out, but you can tell by the beginnings of his basement setup that he was interested in doing things Opie-free.
4.) Who owns the rights to the Opie and Anthony archive? How much do you think it costs?
This is an interesting one. I don't know for sure but it's possible that they negotiated the rights to the shows in their contracts to be owned by their joint LLC. If not, it would have to be Sirius. Whoever owns it doesn't seem to give much of a fuck as it's all over YouTube for a decade and a half.
5.) Why in your opinion do you think Ant hired Erock as his new executive producer?
100% to piss off Opie. I never experienced Erik in any way that made me say... Wow, this guy is a fucking PRO. No wonder O&A scooped him up! At XM he was just as green with the equipment and processes as us interns were. It was the fat leading the blind. He was late all the time and never really contributed creatively unless it was some fanboy shit like Scott & Todd or other insider radio shit. Anytime you asked him what he was doing it would be "working on the archive.." whatever that meant. Early on XM it was "the charity auction". Sometimes it was "worst-of". I've built plenty of worst-of shows. It takes about 15 mins. I can't imagine that hire was anything else but to get under Opie's skin.
I’ve relistened to some Erock clips over the last few months and in one of the clips where Erock fights with everyone because he’s late for the 1000th time they discuss a promotion Erock should have gotten but didn’t (I guess Travis and/or Than got it instead) and they mention some incident that Steve or Erock couldn’t bring up regarding him not getting the promotion. Any idea what that incident is?
So, at XM Erik was a Producer. Steve was a Producer. Ben was Executive Producer. Ben got fired/left and Steve became Executive Producer. Erik was fucking up so hard, they demoted him to Associate Producer and promoted me to Producer. The clip you're talking about is when they promoted Than to Senior Producer. So that now made the chain of command: Steve, Than, Danny..Erik. I forget Travis' official position at the time, probably Producer and Sam was Associate. So basically he got demoted down to new hire Sam level, while I took his spot and Than established a middle ground between Steve and the rest of us. As far as whatever it was specifically they are talking about, either I never knew or forgot. Eventually I became Senior Producer and Erik was bumped back up to Producer. I don't recall anytime where Erik and I both shared Senior Producer titles. Don't forget, Erik was the in-studio board op on CBS at first, until he couldn't even do that and I was called in to take over until CBS ended. Listen to how fucking angry Than is in that clip. The annoyance with Erik wasn't just me. You can hear Than's frustration with Steve too.
